I am American. My parents are Franco-American. My grandparents were French Canadian.

My mom has traced the family tree for our two primary lines (her side and my dad’s side) back 300+ years to 16-sometime-or-other, when our ancestors first emigrated from France. My grandparents were born and at least partly raised in Canada; I forget exactly who moved down to the U.S. when, but it happened during the first few decades of the twentieth century. I know the family on my mom’s side moved to Vermont first before coming to my hometown in New Hampshire, while I believe my dad’s grandparents brought the family directly to my hometown. Actually, I know, or remember, a lot less of this than I feel I ought to. Although this was part of the time period when many French Canadians were moving to New England to work in the mills, I don’t believe great-grandparents or grandparents were mill-workers. In the case of my dad’s grandfather, he opened a restaurant in my hometown during the Great Depression which, except for a couple years when it was sold to an outside interest, stayed open and in the family for over sixty years, and was considered a city institution.

My hometown had a large French-Canadian population when my parents were growing up. Not only did my parents speak French at home when they were growing up, but also at the local Catholic parish school, they took all subjects in both English and French. However, the city was still predominantly English-speaking, and so my parents (and grandparents) did learn English and adopted that as their primary language. When my siblings and I were growing up, we heard French spoken in two situations: my parents would curse in French, and they would speak in French occasionally with my grandparents—mostly, no doubt, simply when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying. They still tend to slip into French cursing when they’re really angry, and my dad’s English pronunciation still bears a hint or two of his French-Canadian background, in particular a tendency to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘t’. (This, combined with the general New England accent, can be amusing: “thwart” comes out as “twat”.)

I’ve always considered myself Franco-American, like my parents, but it’s more my heritage than a substantial part of my identity. Being Franco-American, for me, means insisting that the R in my last name should be capitalized—even though it turns out that in Canada the French-Canadians themselves no longer do. It means knowing how to pronounce the various French family names still common in my hometown. It means having many aunts, uncles, and cousins—some of whom I’ve only seen a few times in my life despite living in the same city, some of whom I’ve never met—and thinking families with a minimum of four kids are not unusual. It means knowing what gorton is and how to pronounce it.

Still, I feel like I’m missing much of my cultural background. Beyond gorton, I can’t think of any particularly French-Canadian dishes my parents would make. (Crepes, I suppose, though I think of those as more French-French than French-Canadian.) We don’t have any distinctive cultural dress, we never celebrated any traditional French-Canadian holidays. I only learned French when I started taking classes in eighth grade. I still have a fairly decent basic reading comprehension, but my speaking skills were always weak even when I was studying, and I now have a hard time recalling vocabulary if I’m trying to compose sentences in my head. I never even really picked up the swear words (although I know them now). I can claim to be Franco-American because of my family name and background, and a few cultural tidbits as I’ve mentioned, but really when it comes down to it, I’m just American. Sometimes I regret that and wish I could reclaim more of my heritage, but overall I’m okay with being just another American.

Recently my sister Andrea joked that my brother Jeremy's visit hasn't happened until I put up a "review" of it in my journal.

So: my brother Jeremy came for a week's visit, his first trip to Seattle and the West Coast.


Nimiel warmed up to Jeremy right away:


but Jeremy is allergic to cats, so he had a bit of a rough time with sneezing all week:

(These photos are at Piecora's Pizza, one of the better pizza places in Seattle.)

We walked around different parts of Seattle, including Capitol Hill:


the Arboretum/Montlake and Fremont/Wallingford:


Ballard and Magnolia:


and other spots where I didn't get photos, including Pike Place Market, the Seattle Public Library, and the way-cool Museum of Flight.

We also went to see Balkan Beat Box on Saturday night and Goldfrapp on Wednesday night:


We also went to Cape Disappointment State Park, at the mouth of the Columbia River, the southwest corner of Washington state:


And we went to Paradise at Mount Rainier National Park:




It was a very full week and we had a great time. See all the photos in the set "Jeremy visits Seattle 2008".

Today is my dad's birthday! He is now 69 years old. Since my last post about him, his recovery from the colectomy has progressed fairly well. He spent about two weeks in Boston after the operation, and then transferred to a rehab center in Nashua, which is close to home and much easier for my mom. He's been working on building up his strength again, and although he has days when he's just very tired, he seems to be doing well and is in decent spirits.

I may not have mentioned before that my dad is a ward alderman on the city's board of aldermen. Of course, he's been unable to fulfill his duties over the past month or two, but once he returned to Nashua from Boston he started watching the aldermanic meetings on TV, which was a good sign that he was feeling better. Recently the mayor let him know that a new state law allowed for board members to vote by telephone. As a result, he was able to participate and vote through speakerphone in an important meeting last week concerning the Broad Street Parkway, a project that's been under serious consideration for at least 20 years. The Nashua Telegraph has an article about the meeting, which talks a lot about the controversy over my dad's unexpected participation, apparently almost as controversial as the parkway project itself. The opportunity to resume his duties even on a limited basis really helped cheer my dad up, and I'm glad he's able to continue doing something he's always enjoyed a lot, serving in local government. 

My sister Andrea and her partner Jen came for a visit:


Andrea played in an improvised music concert led by Bob Marsh:


We went out to dinner a lot, sometimes with Jen's family or my friends:


We toured the Theo Chocolate factory in Fremont, visited Discovery Park at sunset, and the Olympic Sculpture Park:


We visited Jen's aunt's cabin on Marrowstone Island, where it was rather grey, cold, and rainy:


Nimiel was nervous about the visitors for the better part of the first week, but eventually grew to love them... or at least to love Jen's hair:

and the shopping bags:


See all of the photos in the set "Andrea & Jen visit 2008".

The ups and downs of my dad's health have hit a new low: the antibiotic treatment he was on for his knee apparently reduced other, good bacteria in his digestive system, resulting in him developing colitis - infection of the colon by the C-diff bacteria that live there. Last week the doctors determined that his knee infection was cleared up, and took him off the antibiotics; however, the C-diff bacteria weren't under control, as it turned out on Saturday when he fell violently ill and had to go to the hospital. Although the doctors put him on new medications, they determined that the best way to end the problem would be to remove the colon, which they did in surgery last night. The word from my mom this evening is that he's recovering well, even laughing when he mistakenly said "Hi Phil" to my younger brother as he often does even in normal circumstances. 

Hopefully once he's recovered from this operation, he'll be able to get back to a somewhat normal life and be free of further infections and complications for a while. It's difficult because, after so many years taking anti-rejection medication for his heart, his body is very weak against any kind of infection. On his fifteenth rebirthday - the anniversary of his transplant - this year, I expressed the hope that he'll see another fifteen years, which aside from his heart issue would be reasonable for someone from his long-lived family. Now, his 69th birthday is coming up at the end of September, and although I expect he'll see that, I worry about how he'll be by the time his 70th comes around next year. Still, the semicolon is a pause, not a full stop, and I can hope my Dad's got a lot left to say after this pause.

My sister Andrea and her partner Jen arrived a week ago Thursday for a two-week visit. It doesn't seem like we've done a lot, and yet I feel like I've been very busy the whole time and the week's flown by.

We had a good party tonight, and I'm relieved it came off well. I had decided to throw one as soon as I found out Andrea and Jen were coming to visit, just as I've done each time they've visited before, but I put off sending out the invitations until Monday night - partly because there was some question of whether Friday night would be better than Saturday night, and partly because I developed a little bad attitude that I'd already waited too long to let people know and no one was going to be able to come. In fact, although not everyone I invited was able to make it, we ended up having more people than expected and it was a good time. I prepared two kinds of ice cream, raspberry swirl and mocha chip, earlier in the week, and this afternoon I made a couple batches of pizza dough and we had custom-crafted pizza for everyone. Andrea and Jen were a huge help in preparing the pizza toppings, and Andrea actually did the pizza cooking.

Tomorrow we're going to Jen's aunt's cabin on Marrowstone Island for a couple days, so I'll be offline until Tuesday night. Then Andrea and Jen leave on Wednesday night. For now, I have to pick out some stuff to pack and get to bed.

I did not use the available time last night to make a post in my journal, so now I have to squeeze out a quick note while I eat dinner before I head out to a party at a friend's house.

Dad had another short hospital stay a few weeks ago, while they determined that the pain he'd been having in his knee was caused by an infection in the bone. He's now on an antibiotics treatment as an outpatient, and hopefully it'll all be cleared up in a few weeks.

I had another several-day bout of bodyaches and whatnot that led to me visiting the doctor yet again, and yet again determining that it was stress and anxiety. We did an EKG just in case and the doctor said it was the best EKG result he'd ever seen. So I really have to learn to chill out. This time I agreed to try out a prescription for a "rescue" medicine (lorazepam, if you know about these things) to take when I'm undergoing the aches and anxiety in order to help me calm down. We'll see if that helps. I tried one that night before going to bed, as the symptoms hadn't fully gone away yet, and I did feel more relaxed and the aches were gone the next day.

Meanwhile, this afternoon Nimiel started her repetitive litterbox visit behavior that she's suffered from before. Her box was due to be cleaned this weekend so I made sure to do that, and I'm hoping that maybe she'll chill out too and not need a vet visit and medication.

In more positive stuff, work's been good so far this summer. I finally am for real clearing out my credit card debt, it'll be paid off next month. I'm hoping maybe I'll be able to do the next step of the dental work in the fall, maybe November. Also next month, my sister Andrea and her girlfriend Jen are coming to visit, and in September my brother Jeremy's coming for his first visit.

Finally, in concert news I've decided to go to Bumbershoot this year. Saturday, Beehive and Mono In VCF are playing; Sunday, Sons and Daughters are back; and Monday, Battles are back. Those are all good enough reasons to attend. Kinski is also playing at Bumbershoot Saturday night, but Freezepop are going to be in town for PAX on Friday and will be playing a club show on Saturday, so I'll go see them instead.

And I'm done dinner and it's time to head out to the party.

p.s. I tried out swing dancing last week with my friend Dawn. Getting the timing right for the super-basic step is surprisingly tricky. I intend to sign up for a short class that Dawn's also taking, starting next week, although I think I have a conflict that will make me miss at least one class.

In case you've been wondering, my dad has been back at home and is better now that he's off the medication that was causing the problems. He's still working on building up his strength, and apparently still isn't able to put on any weight (although I guess he's not losing any, either), but he's much happier to be back at home. I was reminded to post about this because yesterday was my dad's fifteenth rebirthday. Here's to the hope of another fifteen years in good health.

Let's see, I have a bunch of general updates.

My dad's doing well, he's in a rehab center working with occupational and physical therapists to build up his strength. He's able to stand up and go for walks on his own now, and he's hoping he'll be able to go home next Monday. He said he's eager to get back home and start cooking again.

My nose has remained persistently congested since last week, with some sneezing bouts, but I haven't had a bad day of near-incapacitation since last Thursday. Tony did show up with Claritin later that evening, and that seemed to help for a couple hours but then the non-stop sneezing and nose-running resumed, so I just went to bed. But to my surprise, my nose behaved manageably well throughout the night. I don't see why lying down would make a difference, but in any case I've been better since then, although I'm still waiting for the rest of the congestion to clear up.

Nimiel's also been doing well, the medicine alleviated her symptoms pretty quickly. Unfortunately, after a few days she decided that she really doesn't like the medicine after all, so she's been fussing and making more effort to avoid the medicine and get away. Hopefully she won't start putting up a serious fight, we've still got at least another 9 days to go.

I finally settled on going to see X at The Showbox on Monday for my March show. I had decided to go direct to the Showbox's box office to get tickets for the Ladytron show coming up on May 24, because paying $8.75 extra per ticket as Ticketmaster's "convenience fee" is not as convenient as simply going downtown to the box office and paying only $2 extra for advance tickets. So when I finally got around to doing that last Monday, I checked and tickets were still available for X, so I got one. I'm not quite sure what to expect from the opening acts (or the audience), but it should be an interesting show.

I've also got my eye on a few concerts in April. There are three shows at Neumos I'm considering: Meat Beat Manifesto on Wednesday April 9, Simian Mobile Disco on Thursday April 24, and Sons and Daughters on Tuesday April 29. Of those I'm most likely to catch Sons and Daughters, but I did like Meat Beat Manifesto last time I saw them, and I've also been digging Simian Mobile Disco's current album Attack Decay Sustain Release, so if the shows don't sell out in advance I'll probably try going to each. However, there is another show in April that I will definitely attend: the live broadcast of KEXP's Audioasis local-music show at the High Dive on Saturday April 5. This show is part of their monthly series benefitting local charities, and this one benefits the Seattle Public Library Foundation. It's not so much the particular charity that's drawing me out as it is one of the bands on the lineup, Mono In VCF. I'm very interested to see how they sound in a small club, and whether they can recreate the ambience that fit so well at the Triple Door.

Finally, speaking of KEXP, I was very pleased on Tuesday to discover that the photo I took of "the last pledge" at KEXP's recent pledge drive was used (with credit to me) for an article on the Seattlest blog about KEXP's Radio Liberation NYC broadcasting project.

I have updates on the health issues I discussed in the previous post. My dad was out of the hospital Tuesday last week (later in the day that I made that post), and had a meeting on Thursday with a specialist of some sort to help figure out what the problem is. This past Monday, he became too weak to stand from a sitting position, so they brought him down to the hospital in Boston. However, they have finally made progress: they've learned that there's a past history of some patients having this reaction to a particular medication he's been taking - it's rare, but it is documented. Apparently they've also definitively ruled out infection, cancer, and other causes. So now they're going to transition him off that medication, and then he'll be in some kind of (physical) rehab program for a bit. This all sounds good, hopefully he'll be back to normal - as normal as things are, being an almost-15-year heart transplant survivor - soon.

My anxiety symptoms eventually went away - I think it was Wednesday that for most of the day I just had the tension and tingliness in my head, but definitely by Thursday I seemed to be mostly back to normal. However, I did make an appointment for a general physical, and had that done Friday morning. I checked out generally okay, in particular my blood pressure rating was good and my cholesterol was great. I had a tetanus booster, which left me feeling tired and headachy through Sunday. I discussed the apparent anxiety problem with the doctor, explaining that's what prompted me to make the appointment (although I'd been meaning to have a physical for months), and he discussed options of medication and therapy. As these events seem to be just once a year or less, I felt I'd rather hold off on getting into medication or therapy for now, but if I still seem to be having problems over the next month or so then I'm supposed to get back in touch with the doctor. I'm also supposed to get back to the doctor in a month for another problem - my throat feels like it never really recovered from the cold I had back at the end of October, it's just felt slightly scratchy and irritated since then. He took a swab to check for strep, although that was rather unlikely; if it's still bothering me, he said he'd check for other infections, but it's more likely to be an acid reflux problem, which is definitely something I occasionally suffer from. In all, though, I seem to be basically healthy, and I probably just need to get some regular exercise in.

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In other matters, today is the sixth anniversary of my arrival in Seattle. Like last year, I did not do anything special today to mark the occasion, but I do still like to take note of it in the journal (as you can tell). Recently I was asked, in the context of life in general, "are you happy where you are?" I'm not fully satisfied with the state of my life yet, but taking the "where" part of the question literally, yes, I am happy where I am, here in Seattle, and rather pleased that I've been able to say that each year for the past six. I'm looking forward to saying it again next year, and the next, and the next...